THE CR.ITIC5 o D THE THEATRE 5CR.EWBALL5 & ODDBALL5 Comedy and collapse in "Twentieth Century" and "Well" BY JOHN LAHR B y 1934, when Howard Hawks's screwball comedy "Twentieth Cen- tury" was released, America had fallen victim to the twin catastrophes of the Depression and the Hays Office (the film industry's watchdog agency, in- augurated in the late twenties to pre- vent any exposure of female breasts, suggestion of cohabitation, or uncon- ventional kissing from taking place onscreen). While ED.R. was pioneer- ing new ways to combat economic aus- teri the screenwriters Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, with their rapid- fire wisecracking wit, found a way around the erotic stringencies of the day by discovering a new erogenous zone: the ear. The sexy war of words around which their scripts were built opened up a new arena of competition, insinu- ation, and penetration. (The clamorous "His Girl Friday," which was adapted from a Hecht-MacArthur play, clocked in at two hundred and forty words per minute, almost double the average speaking pace.) In the midst of social and financial fiasco, Hecht and Mac- Arthur's fast talk provided the repub- lic with the hypnotic sound of potency. For both the characters and the pub- lic, the act of flamboyant self-assertion gave the illusion of coherence, courage, and clout. "Twentieth Century" (in revival in a Roundabout Theatre Company pro- duction at the American Airlines) took its name from the deluxe, streamlined transcontinental train that epitomized the American delirium of momen- tum; in John Lee Beatty's clever Art Deco set, Pullman cars sliding along the proscenium create the illusion of movement. Comedy, as Charlie Chap- lin once observed, is all about entrances and exits; it's a trick of the trade that Hecht and MacArthur were familiar with. Here, they spend fifteen minutes setting up the play's comic stakes, before the clapped-out impresario Oscar Jaffe (Alec Baldwin) and his former lover and protégée, Lily Garland (Anne Heche), now an Academy Award-winning star, can begin to hilariously act out, from their adjacent railway couchettes, soci- ety's battle between collapse and abun- dance. One of the first people on the train, at curtain rise, is a well-dressed old galoot who turns out to be a fundamen- talist loony, Matthew Clark (the excel- lent, hatchet-faced Tom Aldredge); he scuttles through the cars plastering ev- erything and everybody with stickers that read "Repent, for the time is at hand." Although this plays as comic hokum, it shows, for those who have eyes to see, that the issue of redemp- tion is the message in the bottle here. Jaffe needs Garland's name to save his reputation and his assets; the histrionic Garland needs to be saved from her- self ("Oh, God, I'm so sick of myse " she says in a surprising flash of self- awareness following a tantrum.) As with all fun-house entertainments, we know from the beginning what the out- come will be; it's the clever maneuvering around the hurdles that makes the ride so thrilling. In Walter Bobbie's slick production, the leading roles have been superbly cast. Like their characters, Baldwin and Heche have lived out their own caprices in public; in addition to their wit and alertness as players, they bring to the stage their own legends, which lend a particular vividness to their characteri- zations and make for a rich theatrical chemistry Baldwin and Heche are both a little larger than life, and they like it that way. "Fate and Weltschmertz lie be- hind the most accidental of the Jaffe utterances. He is an Actor," the stage di- rections of this adaptation, by Ken Lud- wig, explain. Baldwin, whose outspo- kenness on political issues has earned him the nickname the Bloviator in the right-wing press, knows all about the intoxication of public speaking; he milks Jaffe's orotund outbursts to terri- fic effect. "Out! Out! Out! You traitor! I close the iron door on you!" he says, firing his hardboiled assistant, Ida Webb (the droll Julie Halston), who keeps raining on his imaginary parade by reminding him of the red ink on his books. Bald- win invests Jaffe with what Tennessee Williams called the "stiff-necked pride of the defeated." Striding around his couchette in a purple smoking jacket and blue monogrammed slippers, he is a whirlwind of unrepentant pomposi :full of plans, memos, and dreams, whose vulgar grandiosity trumps their stupid- ity. "So you thought I was through, eh? Well, let me tell you something. That is when I'm at my best, my girl," he tells Webb, as his brain pinwheels with possibilities. "Ibsen," he barks at one point. "Find out if he's alive." When a German actor with the Ober- ammergau Players appears-"I am der Christus," the actor says, extending his arms and tilting his head toward his chest-Jaffe hits upon the most craven, meretricious, and sensational idea of his career: he'll stage the Passion of Christ with Garland as Mary Magdalene. "Who wrote it?" Garland asks, when Jaffe finally pitches her. "God wrote it," he pronounces. Baldwin and Heche have a strong In Walter Bobbie's slick production of"Twentieth Century," the leading roles, Alec Baldwin and Anne Heche, are superbly cast.